The Final Stage
by fattydubbs
Summary: all but one of Halo's awesome rings have been destroyed. Unfortunately that is all that the covenant need to destroy the known universe. now Spartan 27 must wipe out the control center himself. R&R Please
1. Prolouge:Meet Spartan 27

_Disclaimer: I do not own Halo, Bungee and Microsoft own halo._

As Spartan 27 walked down the corridor of the mysterious building found on the giant ring planet that the Covenant called "Halo," he noticed a strange emanating sound, like the sound of footsteps coming closer to his position. He knew they must be close, but how close, he couldn't tell. It is impossible to tell how far away sounds are in such large metallic underground corridors. Knowing that it was completely possible that the Covenant was just a few meters away, maybe even around his next corner, he slowed his pace and drew out his combat shotgun, which at close range, could cause quite the bloodbath if put in the right hands.

As he rounded the next corner, a group of four Covenant Elites, along with two jackals, and a small number of grunts waited, weapons poised, ready to open fire at any time. Knowing that this fight could be quite dangerous, he quickly lobbed a grenade, and backed around the corner again.

When he looked back out, there was still three elites standing, along with the two jackals, who had appeared to use their shields to defend against the blast, and but three grunts, who at the mere sight of the "walking army," as they called him, ran as fast as they could. Suddenly, he felt a splitting pain in the back of his head, and as he fell to the ground dieing, he noticed that one of the grunts had managed to circle around and beat him down with his plasma pistol.

_Spartan 27 awoke suddenly._

Realizing that he had only had a dream, Spartan 27 looked around his small barracks room as his eyes adjusted to the dark surroundings. He remembered now that he was based on a rather large planetary station on one of the five moons of Zanzibar, which was in the same system as the second "Halo" ring had been. It had seemed that ever since the destruction of the third "Halo" ring, he had been having horrible nightmares about his incident underground, where he had almost lost his life multiple times. He would also often wake up with a splitting headache, probably because of the concussion that he received from the grunt that jumped him. Although the grunt had gotten a few lucky strikes in, he was still no match for the scientifically developed strength and speed of a Spartan.

As Spartan 27 walked down the barracks hallway to the armory, he noticed many armed guards carefully patrolling the hallways. It seemed that they received another tip of a covenant attack. As he reached the armory, he put his hand up to the door scanner. It gave him his usual welcome of "Good day Sergeant First Class. Remember to put all weapons and ammunition back where you found it."

As he walked into the armory, he walked up to his private weapons rack, where he pulled out his H&K .50 caliber assault rifle, and his .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. He sat down at the nearest table he could find, and began to disassemble the rifle, in order to make sure that it was properly cleaned and oiled.

It seemed that he would not have time to clean either weapons after all. As Spartan began disassembling the trigger mechanism and the firing pin, a giant thud rocked the station. The "All Hands" signal came over the loud speaker, just as the red emergency lights flashed on.

Spartan quickly reassembled his assault rifle. As quickly as he could, he put on his CJKOLS cybernetic battle suit, put his .45 caliber side arm in its leg holster, grabbed a handful of grenades, and started running towards the emergency zone. Everywhere around him, Marines scrambled to their posts, and prepared themselves for battle.


	2. problems at the command center

When he got to the area, he found that the Airtight door was sealed, and that there was an external breach in the room. As quickly as he could, he overrode the door's locking mechanism and activated his boots' magnetic charges, which would keep him from also being sucked out into the giant vacuum. As he strode in the door, he saw few survivors, all of which were wearing air tanks, and holding on to the nearest stationary object.

As quickly as he possibly could, while fighting against dangerous vacuum just a few feet a way, he started picking up and carrying the doomed Marines to safety. One by one, he would carry a marine to the airtight door, override the lock, and set him down safely. Sensing that his magnetic charges were soon to wear off, and knowing that the planet's atmosphere was thick, he quickly grabbed the last two marines and ran out the door, closing it on his way out.

As he sent the Marines on their way to the sickbay to get cleared, plasma shots flew by all around him. He looked to his right, where he saw two jackals, plasma pistols drawn, laying cover for a squad of grunts that ran out a blown out door behind them. Spartan quickly pulled out his assault rifle, jammed a clip in, and proceeded to open fire on the jackals. Mowing both the jackals down in very little time, he proceeded to start picking off the grunts with his pistol.

After a minute of silence, accompanied by the lack of movement on the covenant side, Spartan 27 pulled out his rifle and began to advance. Just then, two elites popped out from inside the doorway.

Spartan 27 proceeded to lower the first elite's over shield by unloading a half clip of .50 caliber ammunition into it. Unfortunately, the gun suddenly stopped firing. Spartan backed around a corner and checked the clip, where he saw that it was still half full. He reloaded the clip and tried pulling the hammer back once again. He brought up the rifle and quickly turned around the corner to once again open fire.

_Click._

"Damn" he thought. He knew just the problem. He hadn't had time to properly clean the weapon, and it was now jammed. Thinking quickly, he dropped his assault rifle, pulled out a grenade and whipped it at the elites. Just as the grenade flew over the elite's heads, he pulled out his pistol, and shot the grenade. The grenade went off with tremendous force, spewing flames all over, killing one elite, and bringing down the other elite's over shield. Spartan finished him off by unloading a few rounds of pistol ammo into its head.

As Spartan walked down the various corridors, pistol drawn, he watched the ground for anything useful that he might find. He had tried picking up a dead elite's energy sword, but unfortunately, it had a fail-safe, and deactivated as soon as he touched it. As he neared another intersection, he noticed two dead marines on the ground on the opposite side of the intersection, one with a combat shotgun laying next to his body, and another with a sub-machine.

"Hmmm. Choices, choices." Spartan said as he went for the shotgun.

He checked how much ammo the shotgun had, and saw that there were only three shells left. He held on to the ammo, but he left the gun and picked up the submachine gun. Sure enough, there was plenty of ammo.

"This looks like it will do just fine. Better hold on to the shells though. They may just come in handy."

Spartan started to make his way to the station's control center, where he would work with Major General Kruschefski to asses the danger of the situation. Hopefully there wouldn't be too much opposition on the way, although he was pretty sure he could handle whatever they threw at him.

As Spartan neared the command center, he only came upon minimal opposition, mainly just grunts. He quickly eliminated them with his pistol, and came up to the final corridor leading to the control center. As he was running, he thought he saw large blue objects in front of the doorway, too big to be elites. He used his visor's zoom function, and saw three hunters taking turns at ramming the door to the control center.

Suddenly, one of the hunters spotted him, and began charging his fuel rod cannon. Seeing that there was no way for him to dodge to the sides, he started sprinting straight at the hunter, hoping to get too close for it to discharge the cannon. Sadly, he was still too far away from the hunters, and the hunter released the charge. Thinking as quickly as he could, he dove down, and slid under the blast, and quickly got up and charged the beasts. He quickly threw one of the plasma grenades that he picked up off of some dead elites. It landed just in the middle of the three hunters, and he watched two of the hunters scream in pain and arch their backs as the blast launched extremely hot plasma gasses at the small, orange exposed area on their backs. Seeing the opportunity, Spartan quickly opened fire on the part of their bellies that became exposed as they raised their shields in defense to the overhead grenade. Bringing down one of the hunters, Spartan dropped his empty clip and quickly reloaded. Knowing that he was now too close to the hunters for them to use their fuel rod cannons, and that now the only way they could kill him was to charge him with their shields, he proceeded to begin dodging the crudely slow swings of the hunters, and spraying small blasts of sub-machine gun ammo into their backs. As the second of the hunters fell, the third, and final hunter retreated and began to charge his fuel rod cannon. Seeing the opportunity, Spartan grabbed his last fragmentation grenade, and whipped it straight at the hunter. He dove to the ground and watched as the hunter was sliced apart by the tiny, sharp shrapnel shards that were propelled out of the grenade.

He quickly ran over to the command center door, and saw that the lock override had been disabled, and the panel was smashed to bits. Spartan saw that the door was getting weak, and figured that he could probably smash it in with one well-placed kick. He pulled back to kick, and the door suddenly opened with a soft _swoosh_ing sound. All around him, officers with pistols and shotguns stood around staring at Spartan, like he was some kind of savior.


	3. A Fellow Spartan

Spartan 27 walked into the command center and walked straight to the Major General, completely ignoring all of the Lieutenants and Captains in the room. The General had a worried look on his face. One of regret, and of sorrow. As Spartan walked up to the General, he withdrew a chip from the main computer.

"General Kruschefski." Spartan said. "It would seem that we aren't having the best day, now are we?"

"No 27, no we aren't. It would seem that the covenant aren't to happy about what you did to that last ring. Cortana heard something over their network about the 'Great Journey,' and how you are keeping them from 'cleansing the galaxy.' We aren't too sure what it is, but we think that it has to do with activating Halo rings."

"That wouldn't be a good thing, would it General," Exclaimed 27. "Sounds like their version of 'cleansing the galaxy' is wiping out every living thing that it contains."

"I think you may just be right. That's why you are going to stop them. Based on the information that we have compiled from the first two rings, the only way to stop Halo from firing would be by going straight for the control center. The only problem is, we don't know how many covenant may already be on their way, if not already there, and how many flood might inhabit it. That is why we are going to give you some company."

"Company?" 27 questioned, as he looked around the room wondering which of the scared looking officers that he might be with. "and who would that be, sir?"

"Well, first, you are going to get Cortana. There are some new things that you should know about her though. First off, her motion sensors have now been upgraded, and you can now switch to active radar scans for short periods of time. She also has been given the knowledge of the weaknesses of the 'Brute' force, and information on the flood, which may come in handy. I'm extremely sorry that we couldn't give you any kind of map from the control center, but we were never able to find one in Cortana's data downloads."

"that's perfectly alright, I think that I may be able to make it without, but it sounds like you had more to say, so what is secondly supposed to be?" 27 said as he kept looking around.

"27, I think you will know who I am about to introduce to you. He was vital in stopping the first ring from exploding, and he is now back. 27, meet Spartan 117. Both of you will meet at the mission briefing room, where you will receive Cortana, meet your partner, and pick up your usual equipment."

"Yessir." Spartan exclaimed as he received permission to retire to the briefing room. As Spartan walked around, carefully taking the corners to make sure that there were no remaining covenant, he noticed many bodies, both from the covenant and Marines. As he walked by one of the corridors, he noticed his abandoned HK .50 caliber assault rifle laying on the ground. He picked it up, and decided that he could clean it in the briefing room.

As he walked into the briefing room, he noticed another Spartan sitting at a desk, in the middle of cleaning one of his two choice weapons. The weapon that he was cleaning was his Remington 300 series 7.65mm NATO edition sniper rife. On the table, was a curious looking weapon. It seemed that this Spartan had one of the new USMC collapsible double-loading rocket launchers. 27 didn't even know that they were out yet. Still, he was extremely curious about the ancient looking sniper rifle.

"That thing is looking kind of old if you ask me." Said 27 as he examined the odd shape and size of the weapon. It looked so big and bulky compared to the sniper rifles of today.

"First off, I never asked you, and second, they don't make them like they used to. This was used around the year 2000, yet is still very high power, and more accurate than any sniper rifle that you would find in that armory of yours. So keep it to yourself." That shut 27 right up.

"Alright boys, I know that being the fact that you both want all my information, and that I am a big help, I made a copy program of myself with the exact same coding, that one of you will use. That way, you both have the same intelligence, and can both enjoy listening to me." Said Cortana in here "all important" voice. "Just to make sure that there is clear communication between the two of you, I have also managed to give you another suit upgrade once you insert me. You will now be able to use a private comm. Channel accessible by only you two, and I can listen to what you say. Also, I would suggest using code names, something 'different' that might hide who you really are from the covenant. Just a thought."

"Hide us from the Covenant, why would we want to do that? It doesn't sound like much fun. All they need is to see the suits, and they run away screaming demon. It's pretty funny if you ask me."

"I agree with 117. We should be just fine how we are. Not like calling each other by a different name will confuse them or mask our identities. Besides, if we are lucky, we won't even need to use weapons. Maybe there will be covenant. And the flood cant understand us either. All they know is basic instinct. Kill, and live."

Both Spartans got up and walked out of the room towards the docking bay. After a quick weapons test, along with an over shield upgrade, they were ready to go.

As they entered the docking bay, they saw several Pelican class drop ships awaiting departure. All around there were Marines loading the Pelicans, and some were already boarding. Cargo and ammo crates were all over the place waiting to be loaded onto the Pelicans.

"Interesting. It would seem that we might be getting some company." Said Master Chief. "By the looks of it we should have plenty of ammunition and weapons until we go inside."


End file.
